Down the River unto the Sea

by Walter Mosley

  Leaving the excitement on the third floor, I took the trapdoor rope ladder from my apartment down into the office below. I usually take the hallway stairs between floors, but that morning felt secret, outlaw.

  There was a pulley system to roll the hemp rungs back up and a long pole kept in a far corner to close the trap. I sat at the window in my private office and stared down at the working-class pedestrians being shown up and disdained by the street.

  I didn’t say or do anything but ponder for the next couple of hours. I hadn’t had much sleep because my mind could not shut down completely. The lack of sleep and deep disposition of mind caused a descent into a fugue-like state. There was no me but just the details of future blue and pink pages. There was an eggshell with a mustache and a ranger with a pistol in his hand. There was a dark hole that seemed to hold intelligence, and a girl-child all grown up.

  The phone pulled me out of the temporary retreat.

  “Hello,” I answered, maybe a little dreamily.

  “Joe?”

  I was still in that faraway place. The voice was familiar but nameless.

  I groaned and the vibration brought knowledge.

  “Hey, Henri. Yeah, it’s me. I must’a dozed off. What time is it?”

  “Three thirty. What kinda shit you into, man?”

  “How’s your father?” I asked while trying to remember the e-mail I sent that morning.

  “Adamo Cortez,” my caller insisted.

  “What?” I said, and then, “Oh…yeah.”

  “Yeah. I called in and said that there was a guy saying that he was a CI for a Detective Adamo Cortez. They said they never heard that name; it wasn’t in their files. But a few hours later on, two suits from One Police Plaza came down to the street to see me. The street, Joe.”

  “What they want?” I asked, the void receding behind me.

  “They wanted to know everything. Everything. Where I met him. What he said. Was it near a video camera?”

  “What you say?” I asked, almost fully back to normal.

  “I just made shit up. Said I was doin’ a foot patrol in Central Park, which I was, and this guy comes up and tells me that I should tell my superior that Bato Hernandez has to make a drop. He said to say that he needed to speak to Adamo Cortez, that Cortez knew how to make contact.”

  “What they say?”

  “They wanted a complete description. What the guy wore, how old he was, and everything else. They even asked if anybody saw us.”

  “They wanted an eyewitness alibi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you ready?”

  “You’re the one told me that I always had to be ready with a lie, Joe. That I should have one all worked out in my head because you never know.”

  “I must have told a hundred cops that, Henri, but you’re one of only two that took me up on it. I’m sorry, kid, I didn’t think you’d actually call in like that.”

  “I tried the database,” the Haitian cop replied. “He just wasn’t there. Not as a cop, a CI, or even some suspect. Nowhere. But I thought that if somebody called it in, then they might look in some secret database that the uniforms don’t know about.”

  “With a question on your lips and a lie in your pocket,” I said in admiration. “You know, there was something I never taught you, kid.”

  “What was that, Joe?”

  “That sometimes you can be too smart.”

  “So what are you into, man?”

  “Is this a safe line?” I asked, way too late.

  “Pay phone in the lower level of Grand Central. I’m surprised these suckers still work.”

  “Don’t worry about what I’m doin’, Henri. It won’t do either of us any good. But tell me the names of the suits.”

  “Inspector Dennis Natches and Captain Omar Laurel.”

  “An inspector,” I said. “Damn. Did they give anything up?”

  “Not really. They threatened me with a review. Said that I should have detained the suspect. But I said that he wasn’t a suspect, that all he did was to say to ask a question, and anyway, I thought he was crazy.” He spoke as if he were arguing with the brass, showing that he was a good cop, a good liar.

  “Nothing else?”

  “That’s what Laurel asked,” Henri replied. “When he did I asked, ‘Like what?’ And he asked did the guy give any other names? I told him that French was my first language but that I had excellent English except for all the foreign names. ‘At one point,’ I said, ‘he asked me to try “Guys-which” or “toucan”—something like that.’ ”

  I grinned at my desk, thinking that the kid would be a great detective one day.

  “And did he come up with a fit?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘Cumberland’?”

  “Too smart by half,” I said. “Listen, man, forget you talked to me. Drop the whole thing.”

  “You not gonna tell me what it’s about?”

  “Your father once told me that the day after you were born he bought a pistol. He said that he’d never needed one before, but when he saw you he knew that he had to be ready to die for his son.”

  “That’s my dad. Good luck, Joe. Call if you need me.”

  One e-mail answered and four to go.

  My second e-mail was sent through a remote router that stripped off any electronic connections to me. I identified myself as Tom Boll, an investigator working for parties interested in the disappearance of Johanna Mudd. I knew that Braun had set a meeting with Mudd and that when he didn’t show up she disappeared. My sources (whatever those might have been) had informed me that he, Braun, was investigating the conviction of the cop killer A Free Man. I went on to say that I needed information about his case in order to see if his enemies were also against Ms. Mudd.

  That was a long shot, but I thought I might at least have electronic communication with the lawyer-celeb, gathering a few crumbs in the process.

  At 4:14 p.m. Aja-Denise walked in. I was sitting at the reception desk considering the tips of my left hand’s fingers. My teenage daughter wore a red dress that was barely acquainted with her upper thighs and white vinyl platform shoes that elevated her to near my height. The green straps of a backpack dug into her bare shoulders.

  “What?” she asked me.

  “Are you wearing anything under that slip?”

  “Daddy!”

  I held up a lecturing finger and said, “Just think if you walked in here and all I had on was a T-shirt and a pair of those skin-tight satin trunks that those men were wearing at Sunset Beach. Because, girl, that would be overdressed compared to what you got on right now.”

  The thing about me and A.D. is that we know what to say to each other. She shifted a little uncomfortably and placed her arms in such a way as to cover some of her flesh.

  “Everybody dresses like this.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t want that,” she agreed. “But if I go all the way home I won’t be able to work for you today.”

  “What you got in the backpack?”

  “A trench coat.”

  “Put it on.”

  She opened her mouth to protest but I opened my eyes wide and she took off the incongruous drab green backpack instead.

  The trench coat was light tan and short hemmed. She put it on, fastening all the buttons and tying the sash around her waist. The coat wasn’t much longer than the red slip and it fit her like a dress suit. But at least there was something left to the imagination.

  “You know we’re gonna have that talk someday soon,” I said.

  “I know.” She gave me that wry expression inherited from her mother.

  I love that child. During my most difficult years it was only her and Gladstone who never let me down.

  The buzzer to the door sounded and A.D. went to answer.

  It was the in-person reply to the third e-mail I dispatched.

  “Hey,” Aja said with real welcome in her voice. She backed away from the entrance, exposing Willa Por
tman wearing a simple and mostly shapeless black-and-orange dress and a pink sweater, and carrying that same briefcase.

  “Hi-i,” she said to all and sundry.

  “Miss Portman.”

  “Mr. Oliver. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No. Aja and I were just discussing the office dress code. She told me that I cannot wear a wifebeater to work.”

  Willa smiled and I gestured for her to enter my office.

  “Want me to come take notes?” A.D. asked.

  “No,” I said before closing the door.

  “I see you got it,” I said to my unlikely client when we were seated.

  “Nineteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars and a pretty nifty briefcase too.”

  “Pretty nifty,” I parroted. “Where you from?”

  “A small town in Ohio called Martins Ferry.”

  “The poet James Wright is from there.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. I read a lot of those files you left. It’s certainly suspicious, and I can’t see why a lawyer of Braun’s caliber would back down. So I’ll put the money in a safe place and use it until the case is solved, Man is dead, or I decide that he’s culpable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you still working at Braun’s office?”

  “I plan to quit tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  Before I could answer there came the haunting notes of “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. Instantly I hit a button on the intercom that would mute any sound and turn on a red light on Aja’s desk. Then I took a burner phone from the top drawer, and as I picked up the phone I put a finger to my lips for my client.

  I pressed a button on the side of the burner for the reply to the second e-mail of the day.

  “Mr. Braun?” I said.

  “Mr. Boll.”

  “I was hoping that you’d call. I’m really stumped with this case.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A private detective working with a concerned group over the disappearance of Ms. Mudd. No one has heard from or seen her in over a week and we’re very concerned about her welfare. She has diabetes and her grandchildren depend on her for childcare.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Ms. Mudd,” Braun said in his most reassuring, most dissembling lawyer’s tone. “No one knows her whereabouts because no one needs to know.”

  “I don’t understand you, sir.”

  “It’s not for you to understand. Just take my word when I tell you that Johanna Mudd was in danger, but now she’s someplace safe.”

  “Even her daughter and son don’t know how to reach her?”

  “It’s better for everyone that they don’t.”

  “I can’t say that to my clients.”

  “Her son and daughter?”

  “No. An interested third party.”

  “This is a very delicate situation, Mr. Boll. You must give me your clients’ names so that I can assure them myself. And so that I can impress on them just how important secrecy is.”

  I took the appropriate six beats to pretend to be considering this action.

  “I can’t just hand over my clients’ names,” I said. “But I will meet with them and tell them there’s more to the case than I at first thought. I’ll tell them that you’re willing to meet…”

  “I need to meet with you too, Mr. Boll. We have to talk.”

  “About what?”

  Willa was staring at me with a fearful look on her face.

  “The phone is not a place to share secrets. Do you know Liberté Café on Hudson?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Meet me there at seven thirty tonight. I believe I can convince you of the need to keep this quiet.”

  “I can’t make it till nine thirty,” I said. “Got a few important e-mails to catch up on.”

  “Okay,” he said quickly, too quickly. “Nine thirty. I’ll see you then. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll have a red pansy in my lapel,” I said before disconnecting the call.

  When I returned the phone to the drawer Willa asked, “That was Mr. Braun?”

  “It was.”

  “You told him about what I said?”

  “I sent him an e-mail informing him that I was Detective Tom Boll, private, and that I was working for certain concerned parties who wanted me to find Johanna Mudd. He knows that I know about the Free Man case, but that much is in the papers.”

  “Did you say about him dropping the case?”

  “No.”

  She sighed.

  “But he may suspect that I’m getting information from inside his office. So the best thing you can do is stay on the job. If anything comes up I need to know, I’ll give you another number you can call me on.”

  The young lawyer gazed at me, realizing, for the first time I believed, how deep in shit she was.

  She nodded and even forced a smile.

  “I guess this is what I asked you for,” she said.

  “You want we should drop it?”

  She searched my eyes for the answer. After a good long time she said, “No. I never really knew how much a man can be a victim of the law until I met Manny. He’s a killer but he’s no criminal. I can’t turn my back on that.”

  I gave Willa the number of another burner I owned and then showed her to the door.

  I stood there staring at nothing after she’d gone.

  “Did Mom do something to you?” Aja asked from behind me.

  “Yes,” I said to the door.

  “Did it have to do with me?”

  I turned to look at my trench-coated blood. “She looked at my files.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can tell when people look at certain files,” I lied. “Files you never opened before.”

  “That’s not really so bad, is it?” Aja asked.

  “No. But from now on don’t take work out of the office, okay?”

  She nodded and that was enough.

  13.

  Aja was gone by 6:30. I dressed and was ready for the night by 7:00.

  The last talk I had with my daughter had put the trouble with Monica to bed, but I forgot, as most men are wont to do, that what happens to me is not necessarily up to me.

  Upon exiting the door onto Montague Street I heard a man shout, “Oliver!”

  The street was crowded with shoppers beginning to think about dinner and Christmas and who felt that they should be outside before the bite of winter sent them home for the season.

  A group of young men and women, mostly black, were fooling around near the curb. From around the twenty-something revelers came Coleman Tesserat, Monica’s boy-toy husband. He was dressed for jogging with the hood down. The sweat suit was yellow with dark blue or black piping.

  I had a short-nosed .45 revolver in my windbreaker pocket, but that hardly seemed necessary. Later that night things might be different.

  “Coleman,” I said.

  A sky-blue-haired black girl watched us. She heard the threat, as I had, in Coleman’s voice.

  “What did you say to Monica?” he demanded.

  “Why you wanna ask me that and you already know?”

  Coleman got to within twenty-four inches of me. He was a black belt in some Eastern exercise system and thought that taught him how to defend himself.

  “I asked you a question,” he said with all the confidence of the dead.

  I said, “You already know.”

  The blue-haired girl touched a young man’s shoulder.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Coleman was saying.

  “If that was true,” I said, still looking at the girl, “you wouldn’t be in my face.”

  “I could kick your ass right here,” Coleman warned.

  “In front of witnesses?” I said innocently. “And me with my hands at my side.”

  “Stay out of my business,” he said, understanding that he’d made a tactical error confro
nting me like that.

  “Did your wife tell you why I said I’d look into you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “She called a man I was investigating. If he was of another nature I might be dead. She was fucking with me for no reason. I just pushed back. And the next time you come at me, be ready to kill, because I won’t stop coming till it’s over.”

  I walked away with all kinds of nonsense racing through my body and mind.

  Teenage hormones sang in my heart and sinews because I wanted to beat Monica’s new husband to pulp. Under that feeling was the revelation that my preoccupation with the opposite sex had returned. I knew this when I saw Blue-hair looking at me.

  I was ready.

  There’s an illegal private club on Avenue D down near Houston. It takes up the three-level subbasement of a huge public housing project.

  You push the button for apartment 1A and the buzzer lets you in. You come to the door and say a name. If they like the name, you go through the door and down some stairs, coming to another door. This opens to a very large room that is quiet and usually half-filled with men and women who need privacy on the level of a secret society. There are comfortable chairs and tables, walls lined with bookshelves, and servers wearing either tuxedos or miniskirts.

  The residents of that building never complain because the owners of the nameless club have at least three security people watching the entrance at all times. There’s no mugging, drug dealing, or prostitution above the basement—ever.

  I had not been to the club before, but I knew of it.

  “Looking for Mel?” asked a lovely blond black young woman standing behind the cast-iron podium at the bottom of the stairs. She wore a little black dress, black hose, and a microchain silver necklace that had a red stone as its jewel.

  “Yes, I am.”

  She took me through a doorway behind the podium, down a slender hallway, to another flight of stairs that led to another large room with fewer occupants.

  “At the opposite wall,” she said.

  I saw Melquarth Frost waving at me from the place the hostess indicated. I couldn’t help feeling that I was actually about to make a deal with the devil.